Another Alice
by Mystdream
Summary: A girl named Alice in the 21st century, just another 19 year old studying world history and culture. Witty, private, quiet. Yet the only thing that ties her to Wonderland is her name. Will that be enough?
1. Maria

"Alice. Alice!"

Alice Sutton looked up from her reading, scowling instantly. She shut the volume quickly, producing a fountain of dust. Then she waited, rough fingers unconsciously playing piano notes on her lap, revising her latest lesson. She did not have to wait long.

Maria Sutton, for all her anxiety, cut a startling figure. Quite unlike her daughter. Her pale, luminescent skin, her dark wavy hair, her piercing eyes. She lit up every room, and charmed her way into every heart. A beautiful, sensitive woman. A caring mother. And a perfect wife. Or, at least, she was. Thomas had passed away when Alice was twelve. Maria had gracefully met the challenge, taking up the mantle as head of the family. She saw Louisa and Alice through their schooling and into adulthood while juggling family finances and the running of the house.

And yet.

Alice was not quite the daughter anyone expected. Relatives, friends, complete strangers who were in awe of the family – they predicted the emergence of a bright, successful girl, as competent as Maria and Louisa. A true Sutton.

Alice was no such girl, and she knew it. She was intelligent and cunning, but took little interest in economics or the arts. She could not paint, would not cook, and did not have any inclination to study law or medicine. She was quiet and stubborn, temperamental and clumsy. She could not stand stifling politics, did not care to maintain relationships with people she despised, and she hated socialising. As much as Maria hated to admit it, Alice had slowly but surely become the black sheep of the family, a family which had only bred beauty and competence, success and panache. Even her looks were plain. Her face was ordinary, her dark brown eyes forever dull. Her hair was as dark as her mother's, but straight; neither thick nor thin. Her skin was pale, but slightly pasty. She may have been pretty, someone you would notice and instantly forget, or dismiss completely in an offhand manner. She was no beauty. She was just…Alice.

But Maria loved her just as much as she had loved Louisa. Alice had inherited that stubborn streak, the will, the strength, from Thomas - much as Alice would hate to admit it. Thomas had liked being master of his home, he was kind and gentle with the girls provided they were mild and submissive. It was not that he held women as weak – Maria believed, had they had a son, he would be treated much the same way. It was just that he enjoyed holding a position of power. And Maria had allowed it. For all his misgivings, she loved him. Not passionately, but in an affectionate sort of way. Louisa adored him. Alice…ah, Alice. She was always rebelling. She loved him, but she hated him. She fought with him, but she ran to him clamouring for stories. To this day Maria was never sure how Alice had chosen to remember him. Would she see the father she adored, or as the man who could've let her explore, could've let her grow, but chose not to? Alice was as bitter as she was strong, and she held her faith and guarded it, let it bloom. Which could be both good or bad, depending on what she was convinced of.

Today Maria knew she would have to face something. Standing at the doorway of the library, she crossed her arms across her chest and raised her eyebrow at a glowering Alice. "I haven't even said anything yet," she pointed out.

"You don't need to, mama. I'm not going." Before Maria could say anything, she added, "And no lunch. Please. This is important."

Maria sighed. "Please, Alice. Do this for me."

"Which, the reunion or the lunch?"

"Both. The first one, well, people will be asking after you, and then what will I say? Don't. Don't say I should say you're not well, because I've said that God knows how many times. People are starting to give me funny looks now. And yes, lunch. You can't starve yourself just because it's the Day of Atonement…you're an atheist!"

"You're not listening! I just want to see what it's like, mum. I have a couple of friends who do it, and I want to be able to discuss it with them. I'm not going to keep doing it. It'll help with my research paper."

"Skiving off food will help with your research paper? You're doing a degree in world history, not world religion."

"World history and culture. And I just want to know. I just…want to be able to talk about what it was like. Since you never let me skip a meal. Ever. Now I have a valid reason! It's for educational purposes. And look, you know no one wants me around at the reunion. And I don't want to go. They all hate me anyway."

"Enough, Alice. You know they don't hate you. Shut that mouth of yours, I spot a mosquito. I know what you're going to say, that you're not like Louisa. NO. You're not like Louisa. Shocker. They love you anyway. Some of them are old, some are young, younger than you. You know they wouldn't spite you. None of them are malicious people, dear. Don't use it as an excuse. Whether they're crabby or saccharine, I love them all. You do too. You just don't know how to communicate with them and this'll never happen if you don't try, Alice!"

"…Are you done? Look, I'm fond of them, but I hate going to these things. You know, most of the girls are prettier than I am. I feel awful."  
"No one cares. Sure, people will admire and praise, but that's about it. You know most of these people, do you think any of them will be whispering behind your back? Anyway, I'll buy you a beautiful dress and you'll look just fine. Smile a little."

"I hate shopping. I don't mind dressing up, but I hate shopping."

"I know. I'll buy you the dress. You don't have to come. Yes, yes, I'll buy something in black. Trust you. No colour variation whatsoever. I swear Dracula would love your closet."

"Dracula doesn't have a history of wearing exclusively black. He might like red more."

"Whatever. So you're going then. Now can I interest you in some lunch?"

"Not at all."

"You go back to your reading then. I don't care what you do, I'm certainly not starving."

Alice had plucked the volume off the shelf again and was already scanning the pages. She did not raise her head nor lift her eyes, but said, "Good. I'm glad. But you may have competition because the dog's not starving either."

Maria's eyes widened and she whipped 'round and stumbled all the way to the dining room, her screams of 'LEO!' echoing through the halls.


	2. Haunting

Alice watched the rain pour down, curled up on the couch right next to the window. The library itself was something of a luxury, but her father had infected his daughters with his love for literature, and even after his death the family had maintained it and added to the collection. It was nothing grand, and hardly large; the size of a small but comfortable room. The window, when left open, brought in floods of sunshine. Alice preferred to shut the windows and draw the curtains, and switch on the neon light. She liked her privacy.

Today she had a sheaf of papers on her lap and a pen in her hand, but she was not writing. She had a paper on the Franco-German Friendship post 1945 due in a fortnight, and she had her information before her. She still had to cut it down to 2000 words, edit, check, recheck, and then go look up the sources before typing it out and mailing it to the professor.

With a sigh, she tossed it aside. A stab of guilt pierced her, but she reminded herself that she had time, and she had the information. Editing and typing in one go would not take her more than a couple of hours at the most. She could do it tomorrow.

The rain fell steadily outside, drops slashing through the air and shattering against the window glass. She pulled her knees up to her chest and leaned back.

They lived five minutes away from town, not quite townspeople, and not quite country folk. The house was of a moderate size. They had never been rich but Thomas had saved carefully and spent reasonably. Maria had, before her marriage, taught grade school. She went back to it after Thomas's death and worked part time, three days a week.

Alice herself had started volunteering at an animal shelter nearby. She loved dogs and putting them at ease was something she could do reasonably well, when she tried. She went there so often that eventually they hired her as a part time worker.

Louisa had moved out recently, going off to what most people called 'law school', and what Alice persisted in calling 'lie school'.

"No offence to every good lawyer out there, Lulu," she had said, "But why is it necessary to practice with your lawyer before testifying? Why should you have to, if you know what to say? And lawyers always have panic attacks when they get an 'unsuitable' judge. I get that – hey, you want your client to get what they want, but the judges are just supposed to consider the facts, right? Whether they're conservative or open-minded or high-strung shouldn't make a difference when they're in court! And they're always portrayed as the bad guys. I get that…somewhat. The lawyers are always arguing and being snide."

"Alice!" Louisa would say, throwing her hands up in frustration. "Instead of telling me, why don't you go ahead and do a thesis on this? Wait, you can't, because these are your opinions, not facts."

"It's true, you know it. There's all this weird arguing and indirect insulting, and…direct insulting as well! And the judge says 'disregard that' to the jury. As if the jury's going to forget so easily. There's so much fighting, Lu. And it's always to win the case. If you've been accused of murder and you haven't done it, they sit there and insult you! And even if you have…it…it just doesn't make sense."

"You have a better idea?"

"No."

"Good. Every system has its issues Alice. The world's moving on every day. You think anyone has time to straighten up and revise everything, make it perfect? To do it, first you'd have to find a perfect solution. And that's never possible, because nothing you do will be completely impartial when it's on such a large scale. Also, who would take charge? Things don't work like that. You can complain about the system, and your complaints might even be valid – although I'm not sure exactly how valid yours are; it's not as if you've ever even been in a court – but even if you choose to remove yourself from this system you might have to go back there someday. You can't escape everything. No one can."

"I'm not looking to escape anything. I just think it's unfair. Don't tell me that's how the world works!"

"I wasn't going to, because I hate those words as much as you do. There's no way to do everything right. Nothing is foolproof. You know, an infinite number of things are happening now as we speak. Do you think that none of those things will affect us? What about recession? Tax laws? What about war? I'm not saying it will happen now but there's always a possibility Alice. Always."

"I've nothing to say to that. You went off on an incredibly misguided tangent anyway."

"I'm not even sure what I said. Anyway, look. Here's something to reassure you. If you're ever accused of murder, I promise I won't argue with the prosecution in direct or indirect terms. And every time they say something nasty about you I'll stand up and say 'objection!' even if it results in me being stripped of my rank."

"That's awfully reassuring. Won't be hiring you though."

"Whoever said you would have to hire me? You'd be my client whether you pay me or not. Although I'd prefer the former."

"Of course you would."

And then Louisa would smile, eyes shining, and their conversation would slowly drift into the mundane matters of life; who was picking up the laundry, when the library books would have to be returned, who would be willing enough to drag the dog to the bathroom and inflict upon the tormented soul the dreaded water-and-shampoo.

Alice missed Louisa. And what had seriously started to scare her was that she felt she could see her. She would glimpse a shadow running by and when she turned – nothing. She might be eating dinner with Maria and she would see a flicker of…something, sometimes a dark shadow, sometimes a white flash. Even flashes of colour. She was used to seeing these when she shut her eyes, sometimes even when she stared at the lights too long, but she never saw them randomly springing around like headless rabbits. Her nightmares had returned with a verve she would rather they transferred to her dreams. She had had nightmares in plenty after her father's death, not specifically because he had passed, but because things on the whole were murky at the time.

She had loved her father, but not with the strength that most daughters did. Sometimes she had all the love in the world for him, or so it seemed. She would worship him, look up to him, chatter endlessly to him and run around after him as a child. When she grew older, she still spoke to him, still adored him. But she also began to hate him. She felt guilty for it, but she could not help it. She would fly into a rage, and he would not respond in kind, but with that calm, superior, condescending demeanour that he reserved only for her when she grew violent. She would fume endlessly in her room, wondering why he would not allow her this or give her that freedom, something she knew was not unreasonable or too much to ask for. She was infuriated by his stern, rigid voice, his forbidding glare, and his lack of explanation.

She loved him, the good side of him that told her stories and tucked her in at night. She rejected what she knew to be bad. The problem was that the good and the bad made up one entity, and how would she direct her love and hate both at the same person?

Yet after his passing, Alice found herself drifting. She would be reading one minute, and an hour later she would find herself wandering the garden, suddenly startled, suddenly alert, with no memory of how she got there. She was lonelier than ever – Maria was often out teaching, or consulting lawyers and bank managers and God knows how many other people, straightening out financial matters and the will. Louisa was two grades higher than Alice in school, and she was slaving away for a scholarship exam so she often stayed back after dispersal for private coaching.

Alice had Leonard, their golden retriever, and she spent long hours sitting by him. If he lay flat on the floor, she would too. Or she would press herself to the arm of the couch and he would squeeze in to sit beside her. She would frequently sob into his coat, not knowing what she was crying for exactly, but he never complained. He would press his paws over her hands and look right at her, and she would feel happy again.

Then there were the nightmares. The strangest things, they were. As a girl, she had never felt that they were nightmares exactly, just things that ran about in her room. Her transformed room, alive with mushrooms and talking flowers. She moved, but she didn't. She was just Alice. Normal, simple, delusional Alice. As she grew older she realised that dreams and nightmares both could seem extremely real.

Her father had told her stories of Alice in Wonderland, and read aloud from the books till she was old enough to read both herself. She knew the naïve, enchanting Alice was not her namesake; she had been named after a dear friend of Maria's who had died shortly before her birth. But she liked to imagine herself as Alice sometimes, walking through the woods, laughing with the Cheshire cat…except she would have given the Red Queen a run for her money. She did up her own Wonderland, and she loved it.

But now she was nineteen, and she was doing a degree, and she did have her insane moments but she was not a child. She knew dreams and nightmares were far from real, that she could not live in her own Wonderland, and that she had no reason for having these nightmares.

Yes, she missed Louisa, but Lu had been away before, for school trips and such, but she had never had nightmares or empty spaces in her day. She had never started seeing strange things. Somehow she could not instinctively tie her father's dead and Louisa's absence to her awakening nightmares. It seemed the rational solution, but she was fairly certain that it was not why they surfaced. Yet there was no other reason.

The sheaf of research papers neatly arranged on her lap slipped to the floor as Alice stretched lazily, Leo at her feet. The rain had slowed, but now it was furiously pouring down again. Leo whimpered as lightning struck. Alice started as the door to the library slammed shut. Her papers were flying; she trapped most of them under one hand and got down on her knees to collect the stray sheets. Gathering them all up, she stood and marched to the door of the library calling softly to Leo, who was cowering beside the couch.

Maria opened it before her. "For once I'm glad you didn't open the window! Are they locked?"

As she rushed ahead to check, Alice dropped to her knees and threw her arms around Leo, who's large form was slumped against the door. He was shivering wildly and every so often let out a squeak.

Maria rolled her eyes, grabbing the books on the window sill and dumping them on a shelf. "That big fat coward of a dog." She observed.

She pulled the curtains over the window glass and turned around to study Leo. "Get him to the kitchen. I'll go warm up some –"  
She was cut off by the sound of a loud crash somewhere in the house. Alice cringed, and Maria, looking horrified, pulled open the door to the library and raced upstairs. Alice looked desperately at Leo, who looked as if he was very likely to collapse. She placed a kiss on his head, hugged him, and dashed out of the library, into the dining room, turned left, and took the stairs two at a time.

Light was streaming from her mother's room in the dim hallway. Alice walked in.

Maria stood with her back to the door, staring straight at the window. Alice froze.

Then she leaned past her mother, rubbing her eyes. The window was intact. Nothing in the room was out of place. Alice turned slowly to the full length mirror. Also whole. Nothing was out of place.

Maria turned slowly, her eyes narrowed. "I could've sworn I heard…"

"You did. I heard it too. Did you check everywhere else?"

"I did your room first. Spare room and storage too. It was probably a neighbour's house? I'll call the Greenes tomorrow, ask them…actually, no, I'm just a little nervous today…" Maria drifted off. "Alice, you don't think there was an intrusion or something? I'm hopeless with those baseball bats they keep showing in the movies."

"No, mum. I just came up. Dining room was empty, and I think Leo's fled to the kitchen. He'd be barking his head off. Even if he is a little touchy when it comes to other elements." The half-smile faded from Alice's lips when she turned back to survey the room again. "Mum, you…"

"I know, Alice, I noticed. That's why I was still here when you came up. I didn't really…maybe I forgot?"

"Maybe you did. It's possible. Maybe you were having a good day and decided t-"

There was another crash, fading away with a sharp crinkling sound. Maria ran her fingers through her hair, eyes tired. "Oh for the love of God…I swear Alice if there's anyone in this house I'll probably go into cardiac arrest or something."

Alice didn't bother running. She walked downstairs slowly, perfunctorily checking the kitchen – where Leo was lying under the table – and the dining room. She ducked into the sitting room, and then padded to the library. She could hear her mother whispering reassuringly to Leo.

Alice flung open the library door, paused for a second, and then –

"Mama!"


End file.
